megabites

  • The average Irish menu…yawn…

    June 29, 2009 @ 11:15 pm | by Tom

    baby_yawn.jpg

    At the risk of sounding like a bargain basement, populist business guru, I have to say that the recession both encourages and suppresses innovation. If you want to survive in the restaurant business these days you can either take the safe option (don’t frighten the horses) or do something unusual and keenly priced. If I were putting my money where my mouth is, I’m not at all sure which way I’d go. I suspect, however, that I would play safe and hope that the till would be fairly healthy at the end of the day’s trading.

    We are not an adventurous people when it comes to eating. No wonder the average restaurant does chicken and steak and pasta. It seems like we want to eat out just the same way as we eat at home. But I have to say that a little travel makes me despair of the Irish menu. And not just on the European mainland.

    Here are a few menu items from Anglophone restaurants around the world. At Dank Street Depot in Sydney, one of my favourite restaurants, you can currently enjoy “pickled beetroots with spiced walnuts, Valencia orange, ruby red grapefruit and Cappari’s Farm goat’s cheese” or “Rare breed Suffolk lamb leg” from Cowra “roasted on the bone, sliced and served with lemony roast potatoes, skordalia and lamb jus”.

    Nearer to home, Hereford Road in West London is offering “beetroot, sorrel and duck egg” and “deep-fried calf’s brains and tartare sauce”. I notice that their entire cheese selection is Gubbeen, Cashel Blue and Ardrahan. Probably riper than you would get here.

    In the Bay Area of San Francisco, a restaurant called Outerlands is dishing up “Gold Glow peach and Arctic Glo nectarine salad with house-cured pancetta, purslane, toasted hazelnuts and Champagne vinaigrette.” And in Brooklyn at Buttermilk Channel, you can have “head cheese” which is what we would call brawn if we ever got to eat it, and “warm rabbit rillettes”. They also do a “flap steak with roasted marrow, country bread and parsley pistou.”

    As we all know (I hope), there is nothing wrong with doing simple, straightforward, traditional food that we recognise, on which we were brought up and which we know inside out. Indeed, doing such stuff really well (roast beef, queen of puddings, cheese souffle, green salad) would be pretty radical. But it would be really rather good to sit down in an Irish restaurant and say, just once, “now, there’s something I wouldn’t mind trying.”

    Don’t hold your breath.

  • Not so cold war

    June 26, 2009 @ 12:17 am | by Tom

    Anyone who has been rendered speechless by a very hot curry may be interested to know that the Indian Army is planning to use extra-hot chillis in grenades for crowd control.

  • How to cook snails from your garden

    June 25, 2009 @ 12:25 am | by Tom

    monica-sheridan.jpg

    Monica Sheridan was Ireland’s first TV cook and the author of Monica’s Kitchen, published in Dublin in 1963 (and a terrific little book that still commands respect). She had a passion for real food and wrote brilliantly. I was reminded of this when I was contemplating the snails in the garden today. Her account of cooking the Irish snail is a classic piece of writing and brilliantly funny. I should add that I quite like snails. Anyway, here it is.

    A SURFEIT OF SNAILS
    Danyele, a young French girl, spent a holiday with us in Ireland some years ago. It was one of those ecstatic summers that we still remember with nostalgia. The sun shone, day after day; for three months.

    A short time before she left for home, we had our first shower of rain in two months. The snails, surprised by this good fortune, came out of their hiding places in battalions to graze on the lawn.

    “Escargots!” said Danyele in raptures. “They are so delicious, specially with the butter a la Bourguignonne.

    “But you can’t eat those snails,” I said. “They’re ordinary snails, not like the special snails you get in France.”

    “It makes no matter. These are les petits gris. We cook them in Corsica all the time. It is very mad not to eat escargots. They cost you nothing except the butter, and they are very well.”

    Well, anything for peace. We collected a box of snails and left them overnight, hoping to starve the harm out of them. I, for one, went uneasily to bed. Next morning the brutes, instead of being shyly curled up in their shells, were rampant and entwined round each other in what was, probably, a farewell embrace. I have rarely seen a less mouth-watering sight.

    Danyele poked and prodded them with elegant, manicured fingers. “That one, he is very well, you think?” she said holding up a particularly unappetizing bull snail. What could I reply but that he looked lovely? After some more engaging comments, she proceeded to wash the snails (which were, all the time, half-in and half-out of their shells) with the abandon of any young girl rinsing out her dainty “smalls”. To my horror, she was called away before she got any further with the operation, but she looked so disappointed that promised to take over if she told me what to do. Here are the instructions, exactly as I got them:

    “Wash the snails in several waters and put them in the water during two hour with big salt, vinegar and a pinch of flour. Wash again with big water the snails, and make them white during five minutes in boiling water. Drain them and make them become fresh. Put away the flesh from the shells. Cut away the black part which is at the end of the animal.

    “Put them after, the snails in a pan. Wet them with half white wine and half soup, this liquid in sufficient quantity to cover them. Put in this liquid carrots, onions and a strong bouquet garni. Salt them and cook with a little ebullition during three or four hours. Make them become cold where they have cooked. Make boil during half an hour the shells empty in water with crystals of soda. Drain them. Wash them with fresh water and dry them. Put in the bottom of the shells butter a la Boruguignonne. Put the snails in the shell and fill this last with the butter a la B.

    “The proportions have been established like this for one hundred snails of well big. Add to 100 grammes of very fine butter this ingredients: 10 grammes of eschalots well chopped, 2 cloves of garlic chopped and put in dough, two strong spoons of parsley, seasoned. Add 24 grammes salt and 4 grammes pepper and well mix them.”

    As you can see, Escargots a la Bourguignonne is no cake-walk.

    I was left with the snails washed in big water. I lifted them out with a strainer. I have a revulsion against handling snails that are half-out of their shells. “God help us, they’d put you in mind of goats with the horns sticking up,” said Mary, my maid, eyeing them from a safe distance.

    I put them into a basin with a handful of salt, a dash of vinegar, and some water. When I came back, two hours later, the snails were in their shells (dead, I presume), and the basin was filled with drifts of congealed slime. I washed them again in many waters and threw them into boiling water to blanch them. After the blanching, I was faced with the job of taking the snails out of their shells. This operation was performed with a darning needle. They came out in as neat a curl as ever you saw. They reminded me of miniature tubas with the wide lip at the top. (Unfortunately, they also reminded me of snails.)

    I followed the instructions and put them to cook with the white wine, the onions and the rest of the paraphanalia. They went on cooking for about three hours. In the meantime, the shells were boiled in washing soda and then rinsed in big water, and I now turned my mind to the butter a la Bourguignonne. Well, that’s easy anyhow. It’s just butter (about a half pound of it), pounded garlic and shallot, parsley and salt and pepper.

    I forgot to mention that I took the precaution of buying two dozen of the French tinned snails (which are sold complete with snails), so that we would have them for comparison.

    The day is wearing on now. It is now 6.30 p.m. and I have been at the snails almost continuously since 10.30 this morning. The Sheridan snails are cooling in the water in which they have been cooked, the French snails are awaiting the moment when they will be re-assembled in Ireland. Over-blown, beige French snails lie beside their tabby Irish counterparts. Fat French slugs overshadow the delicate Irish molluscs.

    The big moment arrives when the snail is again wedded to shell. First, a little butter a la B, then the snail; press firmly with your finger, as though you were filling grandfather’s pipe or scratching a waxy ear. When the snail is well out of sight, fill the shell with more butter a la B. When the shells are filled, put them in a hot oven until the butter begins to bubble and they are ready for the gourmets of the family.

    Alas, my story is not yet finished. After all this trouble, it was found that there was no snail cutlery in the house. The best we could do was to unbend some paper-clips and re-fashion them into snail extractors.

    Danyele and my husband sucked up the snails with great gusto and assured me that the Irish vaierty had more gout. I toyed with a French and an Irish cousin, but without relish. I never did like snails, no matter what language they spoke. I have always found them tasteless, pretentious and without flavour. Without the garlic butter they are almost uneatable. I know. I tried one in the kitchen. It tasted like a hard-worked baby’s teat.

    “We must have snails often,” said my husband, wiping a buttery chin with a freshly laundered napkin.

    We must… OVER MY DEAD BODY!

    From Monica’s Kitchen, published by Castle Publications, Dublin, 1963

  • Restaurant turmoil?

    June 22, 2009 @ 12:32 am | by Tom

    In today’s Irish edition of The Sunday Times there was a feature on the travails of the restaurant industry, with particular emphasis on Town Bar & Grill going into receivership. So far, Ronan Ryan’s Kildare Street establishment is the only high profile Dublin restaurant to have got into conspicuous trouble. Another well-known Dublin restaurant is expected to go to the wall within weeks and direct debits are bouncing in a few more.

    But, overall, the better restaurants are hanging in there, not making money but at least paying their way.

    There seems little doubt that Irish wages and conditions are not helping. It is not helpful that Irish restaurant staff get a better deal than their London counterparts who face similar costs of living.

    Mind you, District Court judges get €147,000 in Ireland while their UK equivalents get €118,000, so it’s better to be both a judge and a waiter in this newly poor country than in the better off neighbouring island. No wonder everything is dearer here. Restaurant staff, of course, don’t have any choice in regard to that unpleasant levy…

  • London Feeds

    June 20, 2009 @ 1:28 am | by Tom

    Giaconda

    London is one of the world’s great cities for eating, especially if you want lots of different cultural influences. You will probably get better tapas or pinxos in San Sebastian and better beans in Tuscany but London, as far as the culinary melting pot is concerned, is ahead of even Sydney and San Francisco. So, I don’t apologise for writing on London food even if it does bother those who are still hung up on the centuries of bitterness and oppression vibe.

    I ate a fantastic meal at Corrigan’s of Mayfair this evening: a white gazpacho of crayfish, a boned and roasted chicken and a summer fruits jelly with a touch of vanilla ice cream and a barely sweetened strawberry puree. Richard Corrigan’s pursuit of simplicity has made his restaurant one of the most fashionable in London which just goes to show that there’s some justice in the world.

    Earlier in the day I had an early lunch of pig’s trotter, egg mayonnaise, green salad, lots of crusty bread and a couple of glasses of lovely, supple Faugeres at the Giaconda Dining Room on Denmark Street near Cambridge Circus. An impeccably filtered carafe of sparkling water came free. The bill was £18.50. This is a great, no frills, restaurant run by Mr and Mrs Merrony from Australia. Personally, I would have strangled the loud, braying publishers at the next table but Mrs M handled them with aplomb just as she responded to a request from couple of elderly men who wandered in from Tottenham Court Road, for gravy with their spuds, by offering them HP Sauce. Which delighted them so much that they decided to break with their usual custom and have some wine. Restaurants like this spread happiness and they are also recession-proof.

    I can also report that Barrafina and Moro are still quite brilliant if you are in the market for tapas and a glass of chilled fino.

    Having spent half an hour trying to find non-resident parking in the Ladbroke Grove area (beware, but it is possible) I went to Garcia’s on Portobello Road (in the shadow of the Westway) to buy smoked Spanish paprika, and a cappucino with a few churros. The cappucino was the real deal. Electrifyingly strong coffee with a suspicion of frothed milk. I don’t think I’ve ever had that in Ireland. Garcia’s, incidentally, sell canned Bonito tuna cheaper than the trendy Brindisa in Borough Market.

    It may not be popular at home, but I love good English bitter and I’ve had a few decent pints of it it in recent days. Harvey’s and Badger,from Sussex and Dorset respectively, weigh in at 3.4% abv which is refreshingly light on alcohol but reassuringly heavy on hoppy bitterness. The best of the lot, however, has been Larkin’s which I drank in a 15th century inn in rural Kent. Seemingly, it is exported as far as Sevenoaks - a good twenty miles - but no further. Local pride is still alive and well within shouting distance of the notorious London ring road, the M25.

  • Complaining

    June 18, 2009 @ 12:45 am | by Tom

    Just a quick one. Ate in Rowley Leigh’s Le Cafe Anglais in London tonight and enjoyed it. The Parmesan custard with anchovy toast was/were sublime, the tempura oysters ditto. Squab was partnered with a sweet/sour sauce of impeecable lightness and the foie gras was like eating a small slab of delicious butter. Cuttlefish with garlic, ginger and raw, shaved choi sim was divine.

    But the roast skate (or ray as we say in Ireland) was virtually raw. In fact, the thicker, meatier side was raw as in sushi raw. One of the veins was still bleeding. Not pleasant, although the girolles that partnered it were perfect. Although pretty much uneaten, it was cleared without comment. So I mentioned it to the manager when settling the bill. No, the rawness was not intentional, he said, and took the dish off the bill.

    Of course, I should have said something at the time. But I was wondering if this was the “new” way of serving skate. It just shows that you should always speak up and don’t depend on wait staff to notice that your dish has been barely touched.

    Despite this complaint, I still think that Le Cafe Anglais is one of the best places you can eat. Anywhere.

  • Kitchen garden dispatch

    June 16, 2009 @ 1:39 pm | by Tom

    It’s great when you find a packet of seeds that you didn’t realise you had. This happens to me all the time and the latest is a lettuce called Continuity which is well named as I had allowed a dangerous gap to emerge between sowings of salad. Continuity is what it’s all about and I note, with pleasure, that this green lettuce has a reddish tinge. I know this may not make any difference to the flavour but I have a thing about colour in lettuces.

    I’ve also been trying to keep up the short rows of scallions (as we and the Americans call spring onions) and radishes. These are French Breakfast 2, in the latter case, an unbeatable radish which tastes so good that the slugs love it too, and Ramrod in the scallion division. Not a bad onion but not nearly as fiery as good old White Lisbon. I think I may revert to the old favourite. I like a hot onion.

    The tomatoes are coming on, some of them well over a foot in height and needing the side shoots to be pinched out. I love the smell of tomato foliage in the morning. The first flowers have come out, so liquid feeding has begun in earnest. They are Ventura (which look like pointy peppers and make great sauce thanks to a high dry matter content), good old Harbinger and another one which I’ve forgotten. The aubergines have suddenly taken off (Moneymaker, a very dependable one in our dubious climate) but I notice that the ones close to the edge of the polytunnel are only half the size of their cousins which bask in greater warmth nearer the middle.

    Our padron peppers (the tiny green ones you get in tapas bars, most of which are mild but with occasional nuclear exceptions) have been nurtured lovingly and have been planted out in the tunnel where they attract the attention of the local slug battalion. I am hoping they survive because, unlike you average green pepper which is not a patch on the red ones, these taste great tossed in a pan with some olive oil and then sprinkled with some sea salt flakes. To be honest, most of my peppers are cut when green. Last year they turned vaguely orange in the first week of November.

    The spuds are good. The early Orlas, grown under cover, will soon give way to the outdoor British Queens. Any leftover Orlas, incidentally, fry up beautifully in some rapeseed oil and have the perfect saute spud texture.

    Johann heroically planted out Baby Bear pumpkins and Gemstore squashes through black plastic yesterday. The dog is under instructions, despite a sore paw, to keep up a strict bunny watch and to take whatever action is neccessary (i.e. she doesn’t have to eat all of them but, well, you know…)

    More after this pause…

  • Fillum noir in the farmyard

    June 12, 2009 @ 10:33 pm | by Tom

    silage film

    We have a lovely old farmyard and, thanks to my inability to do much heavy work while my back gets better, it’s getting very overgrown with weeds. In the middle of it is an old manure heap which was created by someone who rented our stables and grazing a few years back. And thanks to all that nitrogen, it has sprouted a huge crop of nettles, most of which are five feet high.

    This weekend the plan is to strim the nettles down with a vicious brushcutter (which is, essentially, a strimmer with a heavy-duty metal blade) and to cover the area with black silage film, the stuff that farmers use to cover silage bales at this time of the year. Because nettle stems are very tough and fibrous, just the thing to pierce the film, I’m going to reuse a lot of old copies of The Irish Times in covering them before the film goes down on top. This means that the nettles will be denied all light and hopefully, within a couple of years, they will have died back, right down to the roots. In the old days I would have used glyphosate but not now because I want to keep the earthworms healthy - and anyway, it’s not very effective against nettles.

    Black plastic mulch is a great help in the battle against weeds and, if you have the time, to clear rough ground. And silage film, which you can buy in any agri-store or co-op down the country, offers fantastic value for money. The smallest roll, which keeps me going for two or three years, costs about €35.

    I’m going to plant squashes and pumpkins through the silage film so that they can take advantage of all that lovely old stable manure and I’m hoping that the natural defences of these plants will make them unattractive to the local rabbits which tend to eat everything within sight. Better that these plants get the benefit of the organic matter rather than the nettles.

    In another part of the old yard which is less overgrown, I’ve put down silage film with a view to growing a few brassicas there as the existing veg plot is full of cabbage root fly. The only trouble is that I don’t know what lies beneath; it may be a few tons of hardcore but if I put in plenty of compost beneath the planting slits the cavolo nero and sprouting broccoli may have a chance.

    I’m just hoping that I don’t feel too sore by the end of tomorrow.

  • We need to talk about Gordon

    June 11, 2009 @ 11:55 pm | by Tom

    Gordon Ramsay may not have called an Australian TV presenter a “lesbian pig”, but he did compare somebody to a fridge. And he did so in sexual terms which - call me old fashioned if you like - is simply rude and unpleasant. What nobody seems to have commented upon is his very degrading remark about poor old Susan Boyle. Gratuitous and, frankly, the sentiments of a charmless bully. We have all met such people in the playground. So, no change there then. To be honest, I don’t think it was a deliberate attempt to court publicity but an example of how so many English oiks think the Australians are crude, primitive and wholly uncivilised. Which is pretty rich. He was playing to a gallery that may exist in some remote mining towns but he totally misjudged the vast majority of Australians and told us, in the process, a great deal about himself. As to the troubles of his vast restaurant empire, I won’t attempt to intrude on his grief. He has made plenty of money anyway. After his Oz performance, I just wish he would either go away or get back into the kitchen and stay there. At least he has some talent in that sphere. Interesting that he had a go at Jamie Oliver too. There is more commendable zeal in Jamie’s little finger than in all of Gordon’s much larger frame. Jamie deserves more than a mere OBE. Arise, Sir Jamie… And watch this clip now, because I suspect it will be taken down within hours.

  • Keeping up with the neighbours

    June 10, 2009 @ 2:07 am | by Tom

    This story appeared in a Brittany newspaper in recent days. It chimes every closely with what Richard Corrigan was recently saying about Irish food standards…

    Here goes…and I don’t claim any credit for the translation:

    Small self-adhesive “Animals fed without GMO” stickers will soon flourish on food products for sale by Brittany’s retailers. They will probably be approved in the months ahead, but are still illegal. The Region takes the risk…

    GM-free meat exists, and - luckily - can legally be sold, but it is forbidden to mention on the label that the animal has never swallowed the tiniest amount of genetically modified organisms. Today, the only such foreseen reference concerns plant products for which a label is required when the presence of GMOs exceeds 0.9%. For those who oppose GMOs, led by the Regional Council [of Brittany], the effect of this regulation is to keep consumers in the dark about the composition of their food, and thus prevent the organic producer from justifying the extra cost of his efforts, which is mainly due to product traceability.

    A law by year’s end?

    For Pascale Loget (vice-president of the Regional Council, Green party), this law makes a mockery of the view of the majority of French and European citizens, 70% of whom do not want GMOs on their plates. She is therefore delighted by the opinon recently issued by the [French Government’s] National Consumer Council, according to which the “animals fed without GMOs” claim should be approved from now on. “The CNC’s opinion is always followed, and one hopes that the regulation will be changed before year’s end”, according to the elected representative. She sees this as the result of political lobbying by the 53 European Regions which declared themselves “GMO-free zones”, following Brittany’s pioneering leadership on the issue since 2004.

    Stickers or labels…

    Encouraged by this expected legal development, the Region and the Cohérence network wanted to move ahead by creating two self-adhesive stickers: a small notice to advertise the GMO-free status of certified organic shops (*), and a green sticker intended for animal products. Obviously, anticipating a law that is yet to come is a way to contravene the existing law, which forbids such labelling. Pascale Loget points out that “these are not labels, but educational stickers”, with a big smile that speaks volumes about the legal delicacy of her argument. But she has no fear of legal repercussions: on the contrary, she would see any court involvement in the matter as a brilliant opportunity to promote the anti-GMO cause.

    * http://www.consommersansogmenbretagne.org is the new website consumer guide to Brittany’s GM-free products and where they are available for sale.

  • Eton mess

    June 8, 2009 @ 2:32 am | by Tom

     607.jpg

    Eton mess is, as almost everybody knows, a glorious combination of crushed meringues, strawberries and whipped cream. Thanks to the depressing fact that strawberries are available the whole year round, this dessert is to be found on menus throughout these islands in both June, its natural habitat, and in December.

    In fact, it seems to have been invented in the 1930s and was served at this famous school’s sock shop (before that name was hijacked by a chain which actually sells, er, socks) which is what other schools call a tuck shop. But, it was only made with strawberries in the Summer “half”, which is what other schools call terms. (They really do like being different). At other times of the year, it was made with ripe bananas (and I can confirm that this is pretty good too).

    “Mess” is a pretty good description. Put all of that stuff together and it looks pretty messy. But, in the days before Health and Safety became an obsession, Eton boys were allowed to cook for themselves in the afternoons and the creation of such delicacies as beans on toast and charred sausages was known as “messing”. Hence, perhaps, the name, something that Wikipedia seems to have messed…sorry…missed.

    My own recipe for Eton mess involves marinating the crushed strawberries in some orange juice, a little black pepper and even less vodka. I assume that this could lead to expulsion if done by a current pupil. But it tastes bloody good…

  • Food Inc

    @ 1:28 am | by Tom

     food-inc-hog-lg.jpg

    I spent the late morning today making schnitzels from thin slices of Marks & Spencer outdoor-bred pork. It’s not organic, nor technically free-range, but I like the notion of “outdoor-bred”. It tastes good and I’m only sorry that it’s not Irish. We ate the schnitzels with brown butter and capers, some garlicky mushrooms and a salad from the garden. It was good. I’m ashamed to say that I forgot about the grated hard-boiled egg.

    On Friday, a new documentary film about food production opened in the US. I’d like to see Food Inc having read a review in the New York Times, and, even though we avoid the worst excesses of American industrial food production in this part of the world, it’s good to know what’s going on. Michael Pollan comments in the film that food has changed more in the past 50 years than in the last 10,000 years. This strikes me as being rather an over-statement. More than in the past 175 years, maybe. We have to take account of Jethro Tull - and I don’t mean the rather dreary 1970s band - and other advances in agriculture.

    I have been musing on the number of new or fairly new tractors that I see around our neck of the woods. Yesterday, I saw four John Deeres (each of which costs the better part of €100k, indeed some of them cost a lot more) lined up with trailers full of cuts of silage. I’m just wondering how farmers can afford this. If I needed, say, a laptop or a printer, in order to do my job and they cost this kind of money, I would be out of business before you could say “CAP reform”.

    I’m not pointing the finger at farmers. In a world where farm prices are being pushed further and further down, and in which we spend less of our income on food than ever before, life cannot be entirely easy for the producers.

    But last year, someone approached me to see if our few acres could be rented. It was not a case of actually using the land, and there would have been a “consideration” of a few hundred euro for, in effect, nothing at all. The reason for this remarkable offer was that the farmer in question had sold too many sites for bungalows and had ended up with insufficient land for the grants that had been enjoyed in previous times.

    Has farming become debased? It produces our food. So, are we happy with how our food is produced? Do we give it any real thought? Maybe Food Inc will encourage us to ask searching questions.

    I just wish I could afford a new tractor…

  • How to kill a wine

    June 7, 2009 @ 12:19 am | by Tom

    globe artichokes

    There are some food and wine combinations that just don’t work. The biggest challenge is artichokes, both the Jerusalem and, even more so, the globe kind. I was reminded of this over dinner this evening when I stupidly paired a rather lovely Soave Classico (yes, I know: it was far from the usual neutral rubbish) and the first of the globe artichokes. They were fabulous - eaten with some melted butter and a few grinds of black pepper - but they killed the wine stone dead. As in nasty, tart, metallic, utterly yuck…

    Asparagus is not quite so deadly and the general advice is to have a grassy, green, pungent Sauvignon Blanc, many of which actually taste of asparagus itself. Well, slightly.

    We had asparagus too, with the roast chicken, and it didn’t do much for the Rioja.

    The solution, of course, would have been simple, if I had had the foresight and the budget to put it into effect. The only wine that I’ve ever enjoyed with artichokes is the pink version of that great Bandol, Domaine Tempier, which is a bit hard to get and not cheap - somewhere above €20 the last time I looked. And the best vinous friend of asparagus is Savennieres, but I’m not at all sure that other Chenin Blanc wines would do the job. Speaking of Savennieres, they are supposed to develop for years. I’ve had some very frail and over-the-top ones lately, some of them less than ten years of age.

    PS - the “petals” in the picture above, of which you eat the base, are not petals at all. Technically they are “bracts”. So, enjoy your bracts. And, for once, the “choke” which is the nascent petals and usually inedibly bristly, could be eaten whole today. Probably because it is so early in the season. Bliss!

  • Floyd on Fame

    June 4, 2009 @ 11:13 pm | by Tom

    Floyd in France

    Keith Floyd was the first of the TV chefs in the modern idiom. He may have worn a bow tie, of which Fanny Craddock would have approved, and he consumed a lot of wine during shooting, like The Galloping Gournet, but he evolved a very loose and natural style with his trademark directions to the camera man.

    This all started when he admonished the poor man, saying “Why are you looking at me when you should be looking in the pot?…the star of the show isn’t me. It’s the food. So go back on to the pot and don’t come up again until I tell you to!”These days camera men and directors know all about concentrating on the food and doing cutaway shots when they need to. But in…was it 1982?…this was revolutionary. And he could see the future. He told his sceptical producer “Cooks on television could be as famous as rock musicians and racing car drivers”.

    “Shooting the Cook” (4th Estate) has been written by that producer, David Pritchard, who went on to discover Rick Stein and to help, unwittingly, in the transformation of the charming Cornish town of Padstow into Padstein. His account of Floyd, the flawed genius, makes a good read but Pritchard himself is a very sound and enthusiastic food writer. I ended up wanting to know more about Pritchard’s views on cooking and less about his famous proteges’.Floyd has a reputation as a cranky and difficult person but on the few occasions I’ve met him I have found him to be the soul of courtesy. Those who have worked closely with him, however, suggest that he has something of a Jekyll and Hyde personality.

    On TV, he did once tell me off for suggesting that steak could be advantageously anointed with sea salt and black pepper, saying that the salt would draw the moisture out. When I said that this should be done only moments before the steaks hit a very hot grill (and that this is what Simon Hopkinson does), he graciously retracted. But that bit got edited out, of course.

    However, the prickly side of his character comes across loud and clear in an interview with Lynn Barber.Here’s a clip of Floyd being dissed by a little French woman for cooking - oh horror! - in the non-French way. Note the Gallic boff-type shrug around the middle. Good on you, Keith!

  • Do people get paid for this?

    June 1, 2009 @ 11:48 pm | by Tom

    I was astonished to hear, on the radio the other day, that there are academics who specialise in cultural something-or-other. Can’t remember for the life of me what it’s called, but it makes sociology seem like an exact and quite respectable science. It seems to be the…er…academic study of, you know, anything that happens to come into your head.

    Anyway, somebody has come up with a research paper on…deep breath… how the way you hold your glass reflects your personality. As we all know, people who are well brung up hold their wine glass by the stem in order to avoid either warming a white wine or putting paw prints on the bowl if the wine is a pretty red. However, there is much more to it than that, according to this psychologist.

    I just wonder how large the trial was and if there was a control group (being a fan of Ben Goldacre). No, actually, I just wonder why anyone paid for this nonsense. And may I just add that if there are any third level instititutions who want to fund my investigations into daft ideas, I am available, for a fee, right away. And I have a reasonably respectable postgraduate qualification.

    In this instance, the “research” was funded by a pub chain and I’m sure the spend was worth it, given that they got on to the BBC News website (must have been a slow day). What bothers me is that there are lots of so-called universities who would have done the same.

    And did you know that if you are lucky enough to be a 15 year old in the UK, you can do a GCSE course in trampolining? Cool…

  • Country comments

    @ 12:19 am | by Tom

    It’s reassuring to know that some things carry on regardless of the great upheavals in the world of human beings and one of them is the growth of wild plants which don’t rely on us for sustenance. But they are effected, to an extent, by what we do.

    I mentioned, a while back, that we have let our fields struggle on without the aid of artificial fertilisers for several years. And that the resulting drop in fertility, keeping the grasses in check, has allowed a lot of wild flowers to flourish. I know that this is a luxury which few farmers can afford but I would like to think that, in every few square miles of the Irish countryside, we can let a couple of acres go fallow and allow the endemic flora to flourish.

    The results here at Carrigeen Hill are remarkable. Last year, we saw increased diversity but now we are astonished at what is coming up. There are wild orchids, forget-me-nots, bird’s foot trefoil, meadowsweet, lady’s smock, hawkbit, yellow flags, rushes, water mint, ribwort, scabious, campion, violets, pimpernel, speedwell, fig wort, honeysuckle and vetch. The seeds were there but they were choked out by the vigour of the grasses. We now have the kind of wild flower meadows that people are deliberately planting - and just by taking a crop of hay every year and not adding any fertiliser. I only wish that we had wild poppies but they go with arable land (or the margins of new motorways where I also notice a lot of yellow rattle).

    And with the added diversity of wild plants comes more and more butterflies, especially orange tips and fritillaries. The only worrying note has been the quietness of the bees. They are very few and far between this year. A world without bees is not possible, which is a chilling thought. Okay, I’ll spell it out. We need bees to pollinate all sorts of crops that are essential for human survival.

    Even the Elizabethan writer John Evelyn in his “Advice to the Gardiner“,  just reissued by the Oxford University Press, offers guidelines for keeping down pests while preserving bees. It’s a shame that the pesticide indsutry doesn’t display such sensitivity to how the world works. Because, as I say, a world without bees, is unthinkable. If bees were to die out, global warming would be the least of our problems. We would die out too.

    I have taken to noticing what wild plants do well each year. Last year, when we had a lousy summer, the spring was marked by an abundance of primroses and cowslips. This year, what has struck me most, is the buttercup crop. There are fields around here, especially between Conna and Midleton, which are veritable carpets of yellow. I just hope that it means a good summer. And I should add that creeping buttercup is one of the most annoying weeds to afflict our vegetable plot. But it’s a civilised weed (unlike scutch) which is easily de-fused.

    The hawthorn is in full bloom at the moment, diffusing its lovely scent and promising sustenance for the birds during the winter. But I always think that the loveliest hawthorn the relatively unusual pink hybrid. I just hope that there are enough bees to ensure that it produces berries for the colder months.

Search megabites